In recent days I have been busy setting up a new computer system dedicated to weather forecasting and website design. In the past, most of my work has been conducted on a personal laptop computer, which, while convenient and portable, is not conducive to conducting business. Often work done from a personal computer is easily mixed with non-work-related content and I feel that the quality and consistency is lacking. By separating the personal and professional content to individual computers I will be able to keep both systems more organized and less cluttered. In the end I anticipate that this will enable me to serve my customers and clients even better!

This new Austin’s Atmosphere computer system will allow for the following:

• More detailed and frequent weather forecasts
• A more customer-centric web design platform
• A practical testing environment for new web-based applications and programs
• Increased number of concurrent clients
• More high-quality content
• Better customer/client communication

In the future I also intend to use this new computer setup to run daily, in-house weather models via the Weather Research Forecasting (WRF) model. This in-house weather model will take the standard output from the GFS or NAM models and run a higher resolution domain over the Northeast and Hudson Valley area so that I can provide customized hyper-local forecasts to clients in this area.

Also in the works is a new feature coming soon to Austin’s Atmosphere which will track, verify and score all my weather forecasts. The only way to improve skill and accuracy in forecasting is to track and study both past successes and failures. I will soon be posting more information regarding this new verification feature in which I will go into more depth about the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of it all.

In the meantime, I intend to resume posting weather forecasts for the Hudson Valley this evening and will continue to issue a new 48-hour forecast every other day (minimum). For days with more active weather I may post updated forecasts on a more frequent basis.